


Mercurial Static

by Cadensaurus (orphan_account)



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: M/M, Psychological Horror, Slender Man - Freeform, Slenderman - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-16
Updated: 2016-04-16
Packaged: 2018-06-02 13:05:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6567520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Cadensaurus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Survival of the fittest, Dan and Phil find, is a harder task than one might assume, when one is running from an eldritch horror.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mercurial Static

**Author's Note:**

> For a very long time, I've had the idea of "What if Dan and Phil ran into Slenderman". 
> 
> This is the terrible concept put into practice.

They're in Los Angeles for three months. They've flown out, are staying in a house, for a documentary being filmed on vloggers.

They've got an abundance of free time and nothing to do with it.

So one day, Dan decides to go out for a drive, to the local park, and he drags Phil with. He quite literally gets up, wanders over to where Phil is sitting, hooks his finger in Phil's shirt, and lifts, and Phil goes with him without even a pause.

They ride in a cab out to the local park, where Dan glances around as they arrive, and he tips the cab driver, and they exit.

There's a small playground, where children play, giggles and shouts, calls to each other, and Dan and Phil wander past in a slow meander, taking it all in, heading nowhere in particular.

There's trails, Dan sees, up ahead, and he focuses his walk on there.

 

They walk on further.

There's the start of the trails, the vastness of forest that suddenly eclipses the vastness of space of the playground, tall trees, and Dan peers into the venue of slim opening amongst branches.

They enter. Dan hears the sounds of children fade behind them as they enter, only a few feet in, as if the leaves and branches of the forest eat up the sound.

He turns around, catches sight of the children in the distance, turns back around. He's not settled. It seems eerily far away.

Only a bit further in and there's silence. He doesn't know why it's wrong, why it feels off.

Phil talks softly, talks of the woods and worms and his nan, stories that Dan focuses on and relaxes with, but only just.

His spine feels too straight. His ears are alert but to what, Dan can't tell. It feels wrong, somehow, off.

He looks around, spies nothing to put him on alert, and he focuses on Phil again, twisting his head around to see Phil's calm complexion.

Phil talks and Dan responds. They walk for long minutes, an hour, and Dan tries to relax and enjoy himself. He can't. He tries to forget that he has a fear of trees, of these trees that stand too tall and overwhelm him, that he doesn't know why coming for a walk in the woods was such a good idea.

His gut twists. His breath catches. He feels shaken, unsafe. He steers clear of the edges of the path and stays too near to Phil, who does not seem to notice, who babbles on and Dan responds, as calmly as possible.

They make their way out of the woods, and from underneath a shadow of trees and leaves comes the sunlight and Dan warms with it.

He calls a cab, hears the rustle of wind, the skitter of a fly as it buzzes past him.

It's only in the aftermath, as the cab pulls up on an off-road that the trail leads off into, as he slides inside that he realises what was wrong with their walk.

No noise. No birds, no insects, no nothing. Disturbing, absolute silence. Phil says something, something about his nose, Dan lifts his hand where it itches, and wipes, comes away with blood, stares at it, a red that almost matches the plaid red and blue of Phil's shirt. He wipes again, a few seconds later, and it's dry. He thinks it's probably an altitude thing, or maybe atmospheric. Nothing major.

Then Phil speaks again, and Dan is distracted, and the fact disappears fleetingly before it can latch hold in his brain, and he forgets that he was ever frightened.

 

Dan's neck prickles, hours later.

He feels the fine hairs on there rise. He lifts his hand, rubs across the back of his neck, ignores the strange sensation. The pressure.

There's a pressure there, the twisting in his gut, the way his eyes dart at the corners of his vision as he stares at the website he's browsing.

He feels watched.

He lifts his hand again to his neck, rubs until he can feel the heatfriction from his hand, twists around and looks back behind him. There's nobody there.

He turns back around, focuses on the website he's been staring at for the last ten minutes. Less than thirty seconds later, he feels unfocused, as if someone is staring at him.

The prickling sensation resumes. He twists around again. Nobody.

He turns. He messages Phil on Skype, though Phil is only a room away, and he leans back on his bed, pulls up his feed on Youtube.

It's easy enough to get lost in Youtube, though the strange sensation doesn't quite disappear. It seems to drift in and out of his mind, causing his eyes to focus and unfocus, his skin to crawl, jaw to clench for a moment, but then Phil messages him or a moment in the video calls to him and he relaxes again.

He's just having an off-night. That's all it must be. Tomorrow will be a better day.

 


End file.
